Gabriela Soto
Laveaga combines two narratives in Jungle Laboratories: the first describes the
development of synthetic steroids essential to contraception and cortisone; the
second narrative is about the impact of pharmaceutical production on Mexican
peasants, campesinos. Campesinos
provided pharmaceutical companies with an inexpensive raw material, barbasco, which
contains diosgenin, the chemical basis of progesterone. Initially a Mexican company, Syntex,
discovered the chemical process that turned diosgenin into progesterone, but
immediately following this discovery international pharmaceutical companies
came to Mexico to purchase and process barbasco to create a variety of medical
products. The history of the campesinos who
located and dug up barbasco and brought it to collection points where it could
be sold is a history of the social structure of rural Mexico, the changes to
the countryside that resulted from Mexico’s efforts to industrialize in the
twentieth century, and most importantly from Laveaga’s perspective, how
involvement in the production of chemical products changed the Mexican peasants
who were a first link in a vast commodity chain.
The history
of barbasco as a commodity shares features with several books we have read
previously. Initially Mexico appeared to
have a monopoly on a valuable commodity.
Campesinos searched for and dug up barbasco because they saw this
activity as their best opportunity to provide for themselves and their
families. As Laveaga demonstrates,
certain rural Mexicans derived a relatively high standard of living through the
barbasco trade. These were the people
who recognized the value of the yam to pharmaceutical companies, who had the
organizational skills and capital, trucks, to collect the yams from large
numbers of workers and take the yams to the initial processing centers. At processing centers knowledgeable Mexicans
managed the workers to follow a production process that created diosgenin
granules which could be shipped to pharmaceutical laboratories where further
processes turned the diosgenin into medicinal products. The rural Mexican people who most benefitted
from barbasco were the middlemen whose activities came between the barbasco
gatherers and the pharmaceutical companies.
When the government began a program of organizing the campesinos who
found barbasco, they attempted to educate the campesinos and eliminate the
influence and power of the middlemen. The
government’s efforts at social reorganization were only partially
successful. Ultimately, as we have seen
with other commodities, new sources for diosgenin were discovered. Soy grown in multiple sites, especially China,
became an important source of diosgenin.
Corporations continually seek new ways to thwart monopolies of supply,
lower production costs, and enter lucrative markets in an attempt to earn
profit. Beet sugar provided the French
economy with a way to overcome the financial loss of its valuable sugar-colony,
Haiti.
The
political history of Mexico during the time of barbasco activity is naturally
intertwined with Mexico’s involvement in industrial pharmacology. One strand of Mexican politics attempted to
provide Mexican peasants with the benefits of the revolution through land
distribution and nationalization of industry.
The first president to attempt these goals was Lázaro Cárdenas,
1934-1940. As Laveaga explains, Luis
Echeverría, 1970-1976, adopted a populist program not unlike that of Cárdenas. During Echeverría’s presidency Mexican
students and the Mexican media became aware of the barbasqueros, the campesinos
who gathered barbasco. The low price the
pharmaceutical companies paid them for barbasco was decried in the press as an
example of foreign imperialism. The
barbasqueros became a symbol for Mexican nationalism and for the exploitation
of Mexico, especially at the hands of the United States. Echeverría utilized this popular sentiment to
create a parastatal industry, Proquivemex, one that would regulate the
collection and sale of barbasco and establish a Mexican corporation that would
produce inexpensive medical products to sell within Mexico. Additionally his government established a
union of barbasco pickers, UNPRB, to enhance the livelihood of these people and
to secure their support for his administration.
The key to improving the lot of barbasqueros was to eliminate the middlemen
who reaped most of the gain in the process of getting diosgenin to the
pharmaceutical companies.
The second main
strand of Mexican political history, and of course there are more than merely
two strands, is the major effort of the Mexican government to promote industrialization. Laveaga mentions several major infrastructure
projects, dams in southern Mexico which provided electricity for Mexico City
and other urban areas. These dams displaced
large numbers of campesinos. The state also
promoted export-related agriculture and cattle ranching in an effort to enhance
the economy. These events limited the job
options for the very people who eventually became the barbasqueros and help to
explain why campesinos searched for and dug up barbasco. When the barbasco trade was reduced because
of competition from outside Mexico and reduced barbasco supplies within Mexico,
the barbasqueros had few job alternatives.
Echeverria’s
successors in the 1980s faced a very different economic and political
environment. The promotion of infrastructure,
development of industry, and grants to the poor were financed by
borrowing. Mexico announced in 1982 that
it would not be able to service its debt.
This was the beginning of the Latin American debt crisis that forced
foreign commercial banks, many in the United States, to refinance loans. It was the time when the IMF stepped in to assist
debtor nations and impose strict financial controls as a condition of receiving
loan extensions and new funds. In 1989
Proquivemex was dissolved although it lived under the direction of the members
of the UNPRB for a few years with minimal success. The populist programs of Echeverría were
subordinated to a pro-business growth strategy meant to overcome Mexico’s
international financial problems.
Laveaga
provides the reader with a view of what the life of barbasqueros was like, and how
increased knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry enhanced the ability of some
of these people to participate more effectively in the modern Mexican economy. She also demonstrates that top-down, state
attempts to control the countryside were not able to completely change the
dynamics of the social hierarchy that existed there. Jungle
Laboratories contains more embedded history of the country of the commodity’s
origin than many we have read. This is a very interesting book with much more
of value than is apparent in this essay.
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